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Live: The Detour Festival Houses Us

Last weekend at LA Weekly’sDetour Festival, we felt like we were the only kids in the bumper car pit trying to drive in a straight line. At first things seemed easy enough— enjoy a day of music in the middle of a few emptied blocks of downtown Los Angeles—but then our bodies were constantly bombarded with new assaults. Bump. Black Lips! Crunch. Hercules and Love Affair! Crash. Cut Copy! We did however manage to get some photos and jot down some notes which you can view after the jump.

The day started off as low key affair, drifting in from the entrance to the nearest stage where hometown (kinda, he’s from Huntington Beach) hero Matt Costa was stealing hearts.

After that, it was a short walk down the street to watch Black Lips in full-on “fuck yeah!” mode. Cole wore a pilgrim hat, most of the crowd wore wayfarerers on an overcast day.

Hercules and Love Affair is obviously a huge draw—especially with only one prior show in LA—but they seriously stepped it up and turned it out. Despite a half hour delay, they got the kids moving, and that even included the dude in the front row who seemed to be orating the first draft of a snarky blog about the show the entire time. Dance miracles happen every day.

Cut Copy came on immediately afterwards and we kind of lost our minds, along with everyone else. And not to put the dude on blast, but Tim Hoey’s guitar has a black and white photograph of what we assume is his girlfriend scotch taped to it. Sweetest gesture we saw at Detour? Probably so.

The rest of the night is kind of a blur. We're pretty sure we saw Kat Von D. We're damn sure that the lead singer of Japanese Motors introduced himself to us three times in a five minute period. Heading over to City Hall where DJs were spinning all day, we caught the end of Matt Freeland’s set, just in time to hear him drop House Music United’s ode to Obama, “Yes We Can”. The whole place went nuts and we got our second wind. After a bit of Buraka Som Sistema, before our one(!) $7 Budweiser, we got blasted by ninety minutes of blissful guitar wankery from The Mars Volta. Look dudes, we were built for sprints, not marathons. Take it easier on us next time.